The Real News: Workers Transforming America's Most Powerful Unions

By Teddy Ostrow

Last fall, all members of Local 1459 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) in Western Massachusetts received a peculiar letter. All that Iris Scott, a shift leader and union shop steward at the River Valley Food Co-op in East Hampton, can remember about it is that it was brief:

“It was kind of just letting us know that, hey, there’s an international [UFCW] convention happening this April. It happens once every five years,” Scott told The Real News. Each local would be sending delegates and alternates to the Las Vegas convention, and rank-and-file UFCW members could nominate people—or themselves—for the positions.